THE LEGACY is no masterwork but as one of a string of haunted house flicks (including THE HAUNTING and LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE) it's an acceptable enough slice of horror. This one was a British film, written by Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster, featuring a couple of imported American leads and an Agatha Christie-style inheritance plot.The story sees a group of characters trapped together in a creepy old house and assailed by weird events and violent deaths. In an eye on keeping up with modern trends, the death scenes are quite elaborate and gruesome, perhaps inspired by the likes of THE OMEN. In addition, there's a fair wealth of action too, with car chases thrown into the mix as various characters try to escape their predicament. It's an unusual concoction, but somehow it all hangs together, just about.Katharine Ross (THE STEPFORD WIVES) and Sam Elliott star as the rather boring leads. The two would later go on to marry and indeed are still married, and it's clear they have an obvious charisma together. However, as is so often with these things, the supporting cast is more interesting than the leads. Roger Daltrey has a small but memorable turn, and Charles Gray is as sinister as ever. I did like John Standing's posh host too. Keeping things moving along is director Richard Marquand, who would later go on to helm RETURN OF THE JEDI.

I enjoy this film very very much. As a teen I can remember this being on constantly on BBC2 Friday nights. By today's standards of course it's tame as a horror, but look beyond that and it's actually a really clever, very well acted movie. The story itself is very dark, any film that involved the Devil would be. I love the village scenes, when Maggie and Pete try to escape in the car but are trapped and always end up back at the house, it's so clever. Elements of And then there were none, as one by one the gathered guests start to die. I can remember having a few bad dreams about the mirror scene (I was only about 9 or 10.) I particularly liked Katherine Ross, there was a soft sincerity about her, I also really liked Margaret Tyzack's cat nurse. 8/10 it's a very good film, it creaks in parts, but on the whole it ticks the boxes well.

Katharine Ross & Sam Elliott play Margaret Walsh and Pete Danner, a young couple who become involved with a mysterious man, who invites them, along with five others, to his country estate, where one of them will inherit his "legacy", all the while being watched by his mysterious servants, who seem overly close to the master of the house, and when, one by one, the guests start dying in brutal and bizarre ways, does Maggie begin to learn the sinister truth, one that she feels destined to uncover...Ho-Hum thriller is strongly derivative of other similar films like "The Omen", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Exorcist", etc. but with far less successful results. Nicely filmed on location, but that's all in this mostly tepid and unsatisfying film.

Perhaps the reason why Lucas hired Marquand to direct "Jedi". This guy even managed to turn a Satanic thriller into a semi-cheerful romantic piece.And here you thought all along that Satanists only kidnapped people and poultry that it wanted to use as sacrifice. Not always. Katherine Ross gets a very sweet deal by being abducted, getting no less than limitless power from the whole ordeal. "I can do anything I want" - her last line. Did that include hiring better acting coaches? If Jason wanted Margaret (Ross) to come to England, why the road accident? He could have just told her to show up at his address. No need for all that overly dramatic hoopla. Seems like a rather complicated, unnecessary, roundabout way of meeting someone.Looks like the TL's producers were more concerned with promoting Kiki Dee's crappy single than turning this into a quality product. "Another Side Of Me", a Dee track that opens the movie, in no way, shape, or form suits this genre. It wasn't just played at the outset, but during the American couple's escape attempt as well, which played out very strangely as a result. A somewhat cheerful, romantic semi-ballad as a background for an escape scene from the House of Satan? Even Ed Wood knew better.Sam Elliot's character makes little sense. He reacts to murders and other bizarre goings-on as if they were mere nuisances. His reactions are almost non-chalant at times, as if being abducted by rich British Satanists is a process he undergoes 2-3 times every year. His reaction to being almost killed by an arrow? A smirk and apparently no grudge against the guy who did it. I don't really see much panic in either of them, actually, although to be fair Katherine Ross's acting coaches had been on strike just before TL was to start shooting. And I'd really like to know why Margaret simply didn't ASK the people there what the hell was going on! That would have made matters easier. She takes part in a strange group "séance", meets Jason the 1000 year-old man, is promised a vague "inheritance" - and still she asks nobody anything. Instead, the couple makes vague plans for escape attempts. Duh.There are many things here that simply don't hold any water, like that hot-water shower scene, just one example. Was that a murder attempt gone wrong? Surely a bunch of powerful Satanists can do better than pour hot water over a strong, young man in the hopes that he dies from it. Duh. Sort of like throwing darts at a buffalo or immersing an elephant into a bird-fountain. Half-hearted, badly planned, silly.It would have been much simpler for Jason to have informed Margaret years earlier that she was a reincarnation of a witch and all that. Nor do we quite understand how it is that she wasn't aware of who she was all that time.So if you ever get abducted by a Satanic cult, sit back and relax, don't fight them, because it might all be for your benefit, as it was for Margaret.Nevertheless, TL has nice scenery, photography and a plot that strays somewhat from the usual Satanic-cult flicks, with touches of Agatha Christie almost.